G.R. No. L-27614. June 29, 1977
IN RE PETITION FOR CANCELLATION OF ENTRIES AT THE BACK OF TRANSFER CERTIFICATE OF TITLE NO. T-5066 IN THE NAME OF LORENZO BELCIñA, EDELBURGO CHENG AND BONIFACIO CHENG, DECEASED,…
AQUINO, J.:
These two related cases and the case of Cheng vs. Lim Tian Kee, CA-G. R. No. 40634-R have a common factual background. Their subject matter is Cadastral Lot No.
434, with an area of six hundred eighty-nine (689) square meters, located at Rizal Avenue, Dipolog City,
Zamboanga del Norte,
registered in the names of Edelburgo Cheng and Bonifacio Cheng, brothers.
The record reveals the following facts:
L-27614. – On July
18, 1966 the Cheng brothers purchased for P75, 000 from the
heirs of Lorenzo Belciña Lot No. 434 covered by
Transfer Certificate of Title No. 5066 in Belciña’s name.
When the Cheng brothers examined the original
of TCT No. T-5066, they discovered that it contained two annotations: one, a notice of lis
pendens dated June 14, 1966 regarding Case No. 1656, an action for
declaratory relief filed by Sergio Belciña Montesclaros regarding his claim for Lot No. 434, and, two,
an adverse claim of Lim Tian Kee
and Regina Ortega registered on July
20, 1966.
On August 15, 1966
the Cheng brothers filed in the Court of First Instance of Zamboanga
del Norte, Dipolog Branch II a petition to cancel the
said annotations. Copies of the petition
were served on Montesclaros and Lim Tian Kee (Miscellaneous Special
Proceeding No. 1446).
The Cheng brothers alleged that the annotation of the notice of lis pendens and the
adverse claim was irregular because the owner’s duplicate of TCT No. T-5066 was
not surrendered to the register of deeds.
Montesclaros opposed the petition. He contended that his notice of lis pendens was
registered in conformity with section 79 of Act No. 496 and section 24, Rule
14 of the Rules of Court. He averred
that a notice of lis pendens
was an involuntary transaction which could be registered without requiring the
presentation of the owner’s duplicate of the title (Rivera vs. Tirona, 109 Phil. 505, 509).
Lim Tian Kee
and Regina Ortega, who were common-law husband and wife, also opposed the
petition. They alleged that they were
adverse claimants because they were mortgagees of the shares in Lot No. 434 of Ildefonso, Saturnino and Onesima, all surnamed Belciña,
three of the seven heirs of Lorenzo Belciña.
The mortgages, which were executed before Lorenzo Belciña’s estate was extrajudicially
partitioned, were evidenced by three deeds dated April 30, June 29 and October 20, 1964. The mortgages were given as security for the
payment of the sums of P3,500, P3,000 and P3,000,
which the three heirs, respectively, borrowed from Lim Tian
Kee and Regina Ortega. The latter were lessees of the building
erected on Lot No. 434. The deeds were
not registered.
The lower court in its order of September 5, 1966 granted the petition. It ordered the cancellation of the adverse
claim and the notice of lis pendens. It
reasoned out that the annotation of the said entries was in violation of
section 55 of Act No. 496 because the owner’ s
duplicate of the title, which duplicate was in the possession of the Cheng
brothers, was not surrendered to the register of deeds.
Lim Tian Kee
and Regina Ortega filed a motion for reconsideration. The lower court denied it in its order of September 13, 1966. In that order the lower court amplified its
prior order by directing the register of deeds “to issue a transfer
certificate of title over Lot No. 434” in the names of the Cheng brothers
“without prejudice to whatever actions” Lim Tian
Kee might file to protect his rights. (Note that the Cheng brothers were able to
secure Transfer Certificate of Title No. 9535 in their names on September 5,
1966 apparently pursuant to the aforementioned court’s order of that date and
not because of the order of September 13, 1966).
Lim Tian Kee
and Regina Ortega appealed to this Court.
Montesclaros did not appeal. (He filed in the same court a complaint dated
November 3, 1966 against the heirs of Lorenzo Belciña
and the Cheng brothers to recover possession of the lot and to annul TCT No.
9535, the partition of Lorenzo Belciña’s estate, and
the sale of Lot No. 434 to the Cheng brothers.
The case was docketed as Civil Case No. 1698. Lim Tian Kee and Regina Ortega were allowed to intervene in that
case. What happened to that case and the
prior case, Civil Case No. 1656, is not shown in the record).
L-27148. – On September 16, 1966 Lim Tian Kee and Regina Ortega filed
in the same court a petition (supplementing their original petition of September
12, 1966) wherein they prayed that the Cheng brothers be ordered to deliver to
them or to the register of deeds the owner’s duplicate of TCT No. 9535 so that
the three mortgage deeds already mentioned may be registered or annotated
(Miscellaneous Special Proceeding No. 1461).
The Cheng brothers opposed the petition. They invoked the court’s order in the prior
case, Miscellaneous Special Proceeding No. 1446 (now L-27614), ordering the
cancellation of the adverse claim of Lim Tian Kee and Regina Ortega.
Judge Doroteo de Guzman, the same judge
who acted in the prior case, dismissed the petition of Lim Tian
Kee and Regina Ortega in his order of September 23, 1966 on the ground that
the issues raised in the second case were resolved in the first case.
Lim Tian Kee
and Regina Ortega also appealed to this Court the order of September 23, 1966.
Cheng vs. Lim Tian
Kee, CA-G. R. No. 40634-R (L-40813). – On October 12, 1966, or after Lim Tian Kee and Regina Ortega had
perfected their appeals in the aforementioned two cases, the Cheng brothers
filed in the same court, Dipolog Branch II of the
Court of First Instance of Zamboanga del Norte,
against Lim Tian Kee and
Regina Ortega an action to quiet title which was also in the nature of an ejectment suit.
They prayed that they be declared the owners of Lot No. 434 and
that Lim Tian Kee and
Regina Ortega be ordered to vacate the said lot and the commercial building
located thereon (Civil Case No. 1693).
Lim Tian Kee
and Regina Ortega pleaded as defenses in their answer the facts that they were
lessees of the lot and that they were mortgagees of the shares of three of the
seven heirs of the original owner.
Civil Case No. 1693 was also assigned to Judge De Guzman. After trial, Judge De Guzman in his decision
dated September 18, 1967
declared the Cheng brothers the owners of the disputed lot, as shown in TCT No.
T-9535, and ordered Lim Tian Kee and Regina Ortega to pay rentals and to restore the
possession of the lot to the Cheng brothers.
That judgment was affirmed by the Court of Appeals in its
decision of February 17, 1975
with the modification that Lim Tian Kee and Regina Ortega need not deliver the possession of
the lot because they had vacated it during the pendency
of the appeal or after the building thereon was burned on February 21, 1968.
The Court of Appeals further held that the issue as to the
validity of the mortgages, like the question of possession, had become moot.
That decision of the Court of Appeals became final and executory after the appeal of Lim Tian
Kee was rejected by this Court in its resolution of July 28, 1975 in Lim Tian Kee vs. Court of Appeals,
L-40813.
Issues and disposition of the appeals in L-27148 and L-27614. – In L-27614 Lim Tian
Kee and Regina Ortega contend that the lower court
erred (1) in cancelling their adverse claim on the
basis of a petition, for cancellation of entries and without passing upon the
validity of the adverse claim; (2) in assuming that their adverse claim was a
voluntary dealing with registered land under section 55 of Act No. 496 which
necessitated the presentation of the owner’ s duplicate of the title so that it
could be properly annotated, and (3) in ordering the issuance of a transfer
certificate of title to the Cheng brothers although they did not pray for that
relief in their petition.
And in L-27148 appellants Lim Tian Kee and Regina Ortega contend that the lower court erred in
holding that the issues raised in Case No. 1461 were involved in the prior Case
No. 1446 (L-27614).
The Cheng brothers did not bother to file any appellees‘
brief in the two cases maybe because in Civil Case No. 1693, which was
their action to quiet title and recover possession of Lot No. 434 from Lim Tian Kee and Regina Ortega, they
obtained a favorable decision from the lower court.
The Cheng brothers in their consolidated motion of January 31,
1976 prayed for the dismissal of the appeals in the two cases on the ground
that the issue raised therein regarding the validity of the mortgages in favor
of Lim Tian Kee and Regina
Ortega was already decided by the Court of Appeals in Cheng vs. Lim Tian Kee, Civil Case No. 1693 or
CA-G. R. No. 40634-R.
Lim Tian Kee
and Regina Ortega opposed that consolidated motion. Their contention is that the issues in these
two cases are different from the issues decided in Civil Case No. 1693 which
was appealed to the Court of Appeals.
In our view, it is not necessary to resolve appellants’
assignments of error and appellees‘ motion to dismiss
the appeals because these cases may be adjudicated by revolving the issue of
whether the lower court, as a land registration court, had jurisdiction to
entertain the contested petition of the cancellation of the adverse claim and
notice of lis pendens
annotated on TCT No. 5066.
It should be clarified that Cases Nos. 1446 and 1461 were
erroneously denominated and docketed as “miscellaneous special
proceedings”. The special
proceedings are enumerated in section 1, Rule 72 of the Rules of Court. Those two cases are not the special
proceedings enumerated therein. They
cannot be denominated special proceedings.
The petitions herein for the cancellation of the annotations on
a Torrens title and for the annotation of an adverse claim on the owner’s
duplicate of the title are incidents involving registered land. Those petitions should carry the number of
the land registration record of the lot affected
thereby which in these two cases is L. R. C. Cadastral Record No. 77. Section 112 of Act No. 496 provides that a
petition filed thereunder “shall be filed and
entitled in the original case in which the decree of registration was
entered”.
In the instant two cases, what was invoked was the special and
limited jurisdiction of the Court of First Instance as a land registration
court. The proceedings initiated in the
petitions are summary in character.
The petition of the Cheng brothers for the
cancellation of the annotations on TCT No. T-5066 was filed under
section 112. It is settled that relief
under section 112 can only be granted if there is no adverse claim or serious
opposition on the part of any party in interest; otherwise, the case becomes
controversial and should be threshed out in an ordinary case or in the case
where the incident properly belongs (Tangunan vs.
Republic, 94 Phil. 171).
In other words, relief under section 112 can only be granted if
there is unanimity among the parties, which means the absence of any serious
controversy as to the title of the party seeking relief under that section (Abella vs. Hon. Rodriguez, 116 Phil. 1277; Enriquez vs. Atienza, 100 Phil. 1072).
In Case No. 1446, now L-27614, the oppositions interposed by Montesclaros, Lim Tian Kee and Regina Ortega rendered highly controversial the
petition of the Cheng brothers for the cancellation of the notice of lis pendens and
adverse claim. Consequently, the
cancellation of those annotations could not be disposed of in the summary
proceeding under section 112.
Because the Cheng brothers were aware that the controversy could
not be set at rest by means of their petition under section 112, they filed
Civil Case No. 1693 which was an ordinary action to quiet title and to
eject Lim Tian Kee and
Regina Ortega from Lot No. 434.
And Montesclaros, being cognizant that
Case No. 1446 was not the proper forum for the ventilation of his claim for Lot
No. 434, sued the Belciña heirs and the Cheng
brothers in Civil Case No. 1698 which was an ordinary action to annul
the extrajudicial adjudication of that lot to the Belciña
heirs and the sale thereof to the Cheng brothers.
With respect to the petition of Lim Tian
Kee and Regina Ortega in Case No. 1461 to compel the
Cheng brothers to surrender the owner’s duplicate of TCT No. 9535, that matter
was also highly controversial because of the Cheng brothers’ opposition. That petition was interwoven with the
petition in Case No. 1446. The
annotation on TCT No. 9535 of the adverse claim of Lim Tian
Kee and Regina Ortega or the mortgages in their favor
could be litigated in Civil Case No. 1693 (as in fact it was resolved by the
trial court in that case) and even in Civil Case No. 1698 where their intervention
was allowed. Hence, the dismissal of the
petition in Case No. 1461 was proper.
The lower court’s orders of September 5 and 13, 1966 in
Miscellaneous Special Proceeding No. 1446 (L-27614) should be reversed and its
order of dismissal dated September 23, 1966 in Miscellaneous Special Proceeding
No. 1461 (L-27148) should be affirmed.
However, this ruling does not in anyway affect the final and executory judgment in Civil Case No. 1693, as modified by
the Court of Appeals in Cheng vs. Lim Tian Kee, CA-G. R. No. 40634-R, a decision
which this Court refused to review in Lim Tian Kee vs. Court of Appeals, L-40813.
WHEREFORE, in L-27614, the orders of the lower court dated
September 5 and 13, 1966 are reversed and set aside and in L-27148, the order
of September 23, 1966 is affirmed. Costs against the appellees in L-27614. No costs in L- 27148.
SO ORDERED.
Fernando, (Chairman), Barredo,
Antonio, and Concepcion,
Jr., JJ., concur.